All that Sarah and I could accomplish together!

Yes, forsythia I do often wonder if I have retained enough of my marbles to keep rolling along.  I have noticed interesting things about the workings of my brain.  I do forget names, and I"m not nearly as good as my wife at recognizing faces -- she once picked out a cousin of mine, who I had not seen for ten years of  a concert crowd.  But I find that I do remember the names of my patients ( you would hope), but also their kids, parents, significant others, length of their various marriages, lists of their illnesses, of their spouses' illness, infidelities, and tendencies, and so many other bits of personal minutia   So, far so good.

I am also pleased with how well I can think, not only about problems, but about solutions. One of my reasons for writing this blog is to explore how complex human problems really are.  How they involve so many complex interactions between inter-personal relationships, psychological tendencies, biological abilities, societal and cultural conditions, sub-cultural expectations, and even random, unpredictable events. This blog is part of a struggle to make sense of it all.

That is why I have so much of a fascination for Sarah Palin, who just came busting through our state a couple of days ago.  For her, everything is simple, and she seems to have a quick, handy answer for almost everything; for even the most complex problems in the world!

Yes, I admit, I often can't understand what she is saying, or what she means.  The times when I think I do understand what she is trying to say scare me even more, as I can't believe any rational person would really want to say something like that when other people may be listening.

This is what she said in Boston on Friday:

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed." --Sarah Palin, on Paul Revere's midnight ride, June 3, 2011

Got that?

Yes, I may be smart, overly rational, and intrigued by complexity.  But my charisma level is just in the average range, and my willingness to get out and humiliate myself in public is in the low-average range, excluding dancing.

But Sarah is an American phenomenon. She is a woman of this time and place. She is a genius in self-publicity, nervy unintelligible pronouncements, and she is off the charts in just plain Chutzpah.

If we could only magically combine our talents, blend together in a quest to right what is wrong with our country and the world.  The whole Israeli - Palestine thing could be settled in a manner of hours.

Probably not enough magic just lying around.